Given the developments of AP-IV (Island of Empty Eyes) and AP-V (Price of Infamy) the Adventure Path gets

Spoiler:

yet another Dungeon Crawl in "From Hell's Heart" through a Fortress as the "Grand Finale" ? In addition to yet another tactical board game naval battle ? With a BBEG the characters have not even really interacted with and a "set goal" which they might not even want ? And again, lots of writeups for NPCs one never gets to interact with, while there is hardly a plot beyond "fight the naval battle" + "sack the pirate king's fortress"

Sort of feels ......underwhelming. Dungeons. No Dragons. Now with pirates. Arrrrrrrh.

This sort of makes me sad, I really would have looked for somethimg more along the lines of "Fantastic Voyages" and "Forgotten Coasts", hidden beaches in the mist and rich treasures on faraway shores. You know piracy and "Bring me that Horizon !"

We started off with AP-2 this weekend and I decided to stock up Rickety's quite a bit to account for its continued existence :

Population : 400+ ( mostly workers, but some guards with heavy siege engines to assure pirates actually paying up and not slaughter everyone after having their ship finished ), There are also some outlying farms ( plantations )for local foodstuff and breeding for the oxen doing the heavy labour. Which also means, some hinterland, where in case of attack, people can flee too, out of reach of a quick coastal attack.

Some more building like a brig (prison) for unruly guests, some forges for copper sheating and fittings used on drydocked ships, and a crane for actually setting masts ! And of course a lumberyard, to restock yards and planking

All of the later proved rather much fun, when the wasps attacked with a fun running battle through the shipyard, and I added in some extra sidetrecks on location for the characters to get some attachment to Rickety's and later, test new crew and the "old acquaintance" they'd met.

The larger population also permitted some recruiting of potential co-pirates from the "scum" left off there, since otherwise the PCs would be stuck with very few people to actually crew the vessel. nevermind my group actually needing to introduce a new PC

Anyone have any more bright ideas for Rickety's ?

And is there any good (aka official) information for Bloodcove besides what is published in "River into Darkness" ?

Prepping for coming session I reread the character descriptions. And.. encountered a possibly problematic setup :

Captain Harrigan has supposedly recently (adventure outline ) been captured by the Chelians. Given his current "few good men" status, that must have been in the last few weeks or months. After all, he is "re-equipping".
Now Kroop on the other hand has been with Barnanbas Harrigan for some time. The codex says three years, at least two of which he was utterly in Harrigan's debt...

Which would mean : Was Kroop along for the Chelian escapade ? Or was that even further in the past - but then why did it take Harrigan three years to "re-emerge" ? Given that Kroop is certainly not within the good graces of Harrigan, this seems like a dead giveaway for the further plot. The situation btw is similar for Mister Plugg, but he has only been along for a year. Which still is quite long.

The characters here abouts are thick with Kroop. They have asked quite a bit about Harrigan and his officers. But once they are "free" of Harrigan they are gonna look at ways to hurt him...

So.... how is the setup supposed to work ?

And yeah. "Pirates of the Fever Sea" seems to imply Kroop should be kept around.

So... the great adventure of the first part of the plot is "taking the ship to port"... after having been beat up by the monkeys and lubbers aboard.

Spoiler:

No idea how the group will (ever) re-merge with Captain H's band of adventurer's. I mean, just asking. H is handing the P and S pretty much the hand on their own ship, and that is.... all ? No "higher officer" to go along ?

Consider me a bit flabberghasted, but when exactly has a captain handed the reigns to the "second" ship (nevermind it being far better than the Wormwood ) and told his officer "go there and there and... " yeah we will pick you up sometime soon ?
Especially with someone as untrustworthy as P ? That's like handing Fletcher Christian the keys for "the second ship" and exepct him to meet you "off Tahiti" in seven months.... Looking at people like Bartholomew Roberts or Harry Morgan, such stuff has rarely, if everat all, worked out, so what precisely is going on here ?

Any plot behind it ? Or did quite a bit of stuff between H and P slipped from the book, making this seem... unlikely ?

Although the final installments in the STAP are still a fair bit off, my players have come up with a spell combo, which, while not really overpowered, does cause me some headaches with regard to Khala (who is entering their sights pretty soon) , Demogorgon and all of the other "two brains and/or sets of full round actions" guys

The bone of contention is "ray of dizziness" from the SC (p, basically a mind affecting, no save ray-delivered single person slow, reducing the target struck to either a standard action or a move action each round, but forbids full-round actions.
Since JJ is the man behind Demogorgons reincarnation, what is your take on the effect on Big-D ? Does this spell affect only one of the minds of Demogorgon, both and if yes, in what way ?

My take would be (atm) one head gets reduced to single standard or move actions, the other stays unaffected. Random roll as to see who gets affected first.

As for Khala, does a "mind affecting (compulsion)" type spell present a 'confusion', and is hence affected/blocked by his immunity ? This of course concerns Gorgant the two-faced as well.